Personal Social Capital in Organizations: A New Scale to Assess Internal and External Personal Social Capital in Organizations

Social Capital (SC) is a comprehensive concept that refers to the benefits obtained from social connections. Personal SC is the basic level of SC in organizations and is very important both for employees and organizations. However, there is no agreed on definition for Personal SC in organizations or adequate instrument to measure it. The aim of this study is to define and better understand the Personal SC variable and to develop and validate a Personal SC questionnaire that will be useful and effective. The questionnaire was developed and validated over three different studies, after the generation of items and reduction processes by judges. Two studies were carried out using multivariate multilevel models in order to establish content validity: the third study established convergent validity by demonstrating its relationship with the Engagement scale. The three studies together provide robust and rigorous evidence for the reliability and validity of the Personal SC questionnaire. In addition, the study results substantiate that Personal SC in organization is assembled from two different, yet complementary, SC constructs—Internal Personal SC and External Personal SC. Demonstrating the complex structure of Personal SC in organizations makes a unique contribution to the literature on organizational studies. In addition, the new questionnaire is a useful tool for the measurement of Personal SC in organizations and constitutes a theoretical contribution by itself.